


I'll keep on loving you, no matter what they do

by Justafewthingstosay



Series: Original Works [1]
Category: Original Content, Original Work
Genre: F/F, Homophobia, Implied homophobia, There's some violence and some shock therapy, just so yall know, shock therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 16:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20230858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justafewthingstosay/pseuds/Justafewthingstosay
Summary: I had to write this a few years ago for school, as an "Our vision of the future" thing.So its pretty old work, but I thought I'd share it anyway





	I'll keep on loving you, no matter what they do

**Author's Note:**

> I had to write this a few years ago for school, as an "Our vision of the future" thing.   
So its pretty old work, but I thought I'd share it anyway

Her voice still echoes in my ear, her sweet nothings that she softly whispered in those nights of captivity still plague me, when I’m alone. There was nothing that I wanted more than to see her again, but I didn’t even know if she was still alive. I remembered her screams, the buzzing electricity, the pain I felt.    
  


They tried their best to wipe me, but I remembered. I always remembered. It was a blessing and a curse at the same time because even though I could remember all the good and beautiful, the horrors highly outweighed the good. Mostly these horrors controlled my thoughts, but I wouldn’t want to be wiped, even if that meant that all the nightmares would disappear and I could be happy, I wouldn’t want to do it. 

The loud alarm shook me from my thoughts. Looking around in the big room, I saw the other six cadets that slowly woke up from their slumber. There was no need for us to have rooms for ourselves, we hadn’t been matched yet. So there was no need for privacy. 

Over the main door into our hall was the big poster of a smiling cadet, holding out a thumbs up at us, with big yellow letters saying “WORKING IS HAPPINESS” under it. As I looked at that poster, I felt my chest tightening and my stomach flipping. Utter disgust ran through my whole body, but I couldn’t let it show. The last time, I showed my honest displeasure, I was wiped. They tried to get all of my memories off the war out of my brain, but they never succeeded. I subconsciously traced the thin, white scars on my arms with my finger. The shock wounds were obvious. But instead of scaring me, they only made me more eager to put a stop to all of this. 

The familiar sounds of drones made their way into my ears and I got up quickly. As we saw the Colonel, we all quickly saluted. I realised that Peter, a small boy, probably not over the age of fourteen had his wrong hand up, he didn’t look up to us and we weren’t allowed to talk unless spoken to by the colonel, so I couldn’t tell him. 

The six drone robots flew in behind the colonel, all of them flying in front of one us. They were going to take our vitals in a minute and bring us our daily ration of food.    
  
As the colonel walked in, I realised how he softly hesitated while walked past Peter. My jaw clenched up tightly and I tried to focus on the wall, hoping that nothing bad would happen to the small boy. The colonel didn’t even look at him, just took his truncheon that he used to hit the bed frame with. 

“Wrong hand, Cadet,” He emphasized and I saw Peter quickly switch hands.

“Hands down,” the Colonel exclaimed and we dropped our hands. “Today is another matching ceremony. I expect all of you at your best behaviour. You don’t want your partner to be disappointed in you, right?”

At those words, I saw all of them lower their heads a little. They were ashamed, you could tell. The man across from me, Einar, an 18-year-old boy from what used to be Finland, starting to shake. I wanted to do nothing more than to walk over and engulf him in a hug. It was his first matching ceremony, he probably didn’t know what to expect.

“Gather new data, then follow me,” The Colonel addressed the drones and all of them made a chirping sound of agreement and with that, the Colonel was gone. 

All of us released a soft sigh while dropping our shoulders as soon as he was gone and stood up straight again for our drones to scan us. They took data on our weight, nutrients, vitamins and even took a blood test, before creating the perfect meal for us. 

This took them about five minutes, and after we all got our little package of powder, they flew out of the room. 

Once it was only us again, I ran over to Einar, helping him sit down on his bed and take deep breaths. We all were in his place once, so we knew how he felt. I slowly took his hand and squeezed it. He was shaking and I saw tears waiting to make their trail down his face in his eyes. 

“It’s okay. I know you’re nervous, but it’s not as bad as you think,” I smiled at him, trying to stay as positive as possible. 

He nodded and pulled me into an anxious hug.

  
“What if they can’t match me?” he asked carefully and I knew what he meant. The matching progress was only for reproductive purposes. People who could not have children weren’t matched and we stayed alone. Forever. 

The Garrison didn’t match us for love, or happiness. No, they matched us to keep our population up, making sure that we don’t go extinct, because what is an army of workers when you don’t have younger ones to replace them? 

They didn’t do anything for love, they actually did everything to keep us from loving and they found a way to keep us from doing so. There were only a few people that still knew what it was like to love. I was one of them. But this wasn’t because we were special, we were failures of the system. 

Normally children would be given to the Garrison at the age of four, being raised to only value the academic aspects of life, not being showed love, but I was so sick at the age of four that the Garrison decided to leave me to die with my parents. They didn’t want to waste expensive resources on someone who probably wouldn’t make it anyway. But I did, at the age of six and a half, I was finally healthy enough to be put into the program, but I was flawed. 

I was shown too much affection. That’s what they said. 

The whole point of our upbringing was to devalue love so much that people wouldn’t be able to love in the first place. 

But like I said before, every perfect system has failures. 

I sat with Einar on his bed, until Theodosia came with two bowls of water to us and handed each of us one. 

We both poured our powder into the water and waited for it to gain a thick consistency. We started to all eat together and I looked around in the small circle of people. 

We were all different ages, but Peter was the youngest. Einar was a close second to Peter, with eighteen, Theodosia and Yasmin were both around the age of twenty-three. I was the second oldest with twenty-seven. Emanuel was the oldest with fifty-three. 

He had given up the hope to be matched long ago. 

As we heard the bell for the matching progress, we stood up quickly and walked out together, Peter following close behind, even though you couldn’t be matched until you were eighteen. 

We walked into the huge hall with a small stage in the front. My head started to move around the crowd, my eyes subconsciously looking for her, even though I knew that she was probably already dead. 

I never gave up hope to find her after the war, but it had been five years and I had never even seen her or heard her name. It was safe to assume that she was dead, just like Jax, the leader of the revolution. 

I had many theories on why they kept me alive. Maybe because I drove into their main control hub, just to get one of the younger ones out. They were probably convinced that someone that was stupid enough to do that, wouldn’t be a problem. 

Sometimes I asked myself, why I was still alive, but then again I had a fight to win and I wasn’t giving up. I had been stealing scrap parts of metal over the last weeks and had started to build a glider in our bathroom. It was the only place that didn’t have cameras in it. Also, because we technically are a twelve people room, we had six free shower spaces, where I had enough space to park the thing until I finished building it.

I was going to get out of here, there had to be some rebels left and if not, at least I wasn’t working for an uncaring society that had taken our basic right to feelings.

That’s all that we did, we worked for the ones on the upper levels and eventually died. 

“Everyone, we have gathered the results from our newest adults,” A small woman said at the front. You could tell that she wasn’t a worker. Her nails were painted and she was wearing high heels. Something that most workers would never do. Especially not in my area. We were engineers, designing the newest models for the upper level. 

I didn’t pay attention to them calling the names, it was the same thing every month. I started fidgeting with my hands, mostly out of boredom, but I was worried but also excited for Einar, maybe he would find his match. 

Peter and I started to play Rock, Paper, Scissors after a while, the ceremonies were long and draining, so we tried to focus on something else. 

They were still calling the names of the new matches and we realised that Einar was still here and I pulled him into a quick hug, for what we were yelled at immediately, the guards were on edge for some reason. 

I stopped playing with them, but they continued, while I looked around, trying to pinpoint why exactly the guards were acting weird. 

It only took a few minutes, until the question was answered for me. 

“Laura Leigh Parkson, Tadeusz Chmiel!” The woman in front called out and my head shot up, looking at the stage. There she was, wearing a pilot uniform, her tan skin in perfect harmony with her dark brown hair, that was pulled up into a ponytail. 

I wanted to do nothing more than to jump up and scream out that I was there, that she didn’t have to go with him, but as soon as I only moved my hand, I felt a gun pressed into my back. 

“Don’t you even think about it,” A muffled voice said from under the helmet. My eyes shot around in the room and I had a perfect idea. I put both of my hands on the back of my head and lowered it a little, to give up a submissive vibe

“I’m sorry,” I insisted and in a matter of seconds, I grabbed the accessory rail of the gun, pulled it over my head until it was lying firmly in my hand, before spinning around and delivering a quick punch directly at his throat. 

I started running towards the stage, pushing people aside, while knocking out the guards on the way there. 

“LAURA!” I screamed and I saw how her blue eyes looked at me, straight at me and the grin that spread on her face, made my heart jump and gave me chills. She started to run towards me and for a second the world was perfect. 

“MARIA” She yelled, as suddenly two guards grabbed her by the sides before I could lift my gun and shoot, my arms were pulled behind my back. Laura started screaming out curses and I felt tears slowly making their way down my cheeks. The guards pulled me away and everything became a blur, the only thing I could see clearly was her face, how she screamed, how her gorgeous blue eyes were leaking water, how she looked me dead in the eye, before screaming an “I love you,”

The next thing I felt was a hard punch and my face hitting the cold floor. 

I was greeted with a sharp pain at the side of my head as I woke up and I winced, moving my hand up slowly to touch it.

“You shouldn’t do that,” A cold voice advised me and only now I saw that I wasn’t alone. A tall and handsome man was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, in front of him was a table full of food. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast. Everything that you could wish for when you had been eating powder good for the last twenty-seven years of your life. 

“Join me?” He suggested, with a smile on his face. I got up slowly and made my way over to sit down across from him. I didn’t touch any of the food.

He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms across his chest and smiling. 

  
“Maria Marcella Bancroft, you surprise me every time,” he marvelled. I didn’t acknowledge his words but only stared into his eyes. 

“I see, you don’t want to speak to me, understandable, but I’m not here to be your enemy, I’m here to be your friend. Here to make you an offer,” He raised his eyebrows quickly, the bright smile still on his lips. 

When I still didn’t reply, he got annoyed. 

“You’re an amazing fighter, smart with technology, quick with learning new things, able to build a glider with nothing but scraps,” My eyes widened and I felt myself getting tense.

“Oh we knew that it was there, we just wanted to see, how far you could get,” he revealed.

“So the offer stands, come fight with us, be on the good side for once,” he suggested.

A quick and small chuckle escaped my lips before my eyes turned cold and my smile fell.

“I’d rather pick up shit for the rest of my lips than fight for you,” I emphasized and I saw his expression turn cold.

Without looking at the guards, he barked a “Wipe her,” at them and I kept my smug smile on my face until the first electroshock hit me. 

* * *

I was lying on my bed, tracing my fingers over the new scars, knowing that they were worth it because I saw her. 

  
The room was dark, most of the others were already sleeping. Only Einar and I were still awake.

"Maria?" Einar was lying on his bed across from mine, one arm under his head, staring at the ceiling. I let out a small acknowledging sound, urging him to continue.

"What does being in love feel like?" He mumbled out softly and I huffed out a laugh.

"It's pain. It's seeing someone and your breath quickening, your stomach turning in happiness, knowing that you will never be able to look at their face without your gut dropping and a smile returning to your face. Even though you know, that they will never love you back, " I said, a soft, sad smile creeping onto my face.

"That sounds hard, why would people want that?" he asked 

"Because it's the best feeling. Do you know when you finally connect the right wires on a pod? And you get this feeling of success that boils up from your stomach into your chest and you could scream out of happiness? That's what love is like. Yes, love is painful and horrible and makes you do stupid things, but in the end, it's all worth it." 

"Do you ever -well - do you ever think you will be able to heal?" he asked carefully, and I just smiled.

  
"When you love like that, it takes a lifetime to heal" 


End file.
